


petrichor

by fiveyaaas



Series: when autumn comes [29]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: (more implied), Character Study, Consensual Somnophilia, Cunnilingus, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Kink Negotiation, Oral Sex, ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-01
Updated: 2020-11-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:49:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,988
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27335950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiveyaaas/pseuds/fiveyaaas
Summary: Finding something exquisite in small, mundane things brought much more joy than all of the years of waiting to be extraordinary ever had. It certainly brought much more joy than when she finally realized she was extraordinary.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy/Vanya Hargreeves
Series: when autumn comes [29]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1941919
Comments: 1
Kudos: 48
Collections: Harcest Fall Festival: Fiveya Kinktober 2020





	petrichor

**Author's Note:**

> I again apologize for taking so long to post! 
> 
> Please read the tags beforehand!

All of her life, she had wanted something grand, something she considered entirely out of the realm of possibilities- to be extraordinary. Once she had it, and it was corrupted beyond her wildest imagination, she realized that contenting herself with smaller things was not only more realistic but also more _rewarding._ Finding something exquisite in small, mundane things brought much more joy than all of the years of _waiting_ to be extraordinary ever had. It certainly brought much more joy than when she finally realized she _was_ extraordinary. 

There were many small things that she found that she enjoyed. 

She liked going to the bookstore with Ben and Klaus. Klaus used to never take him apparently, but he spends his time in the cafe when Vanya convinces him to let Ben go, flicking disinterestedly through whatever the current bestseller was while she held open whatever book Ben asked for, flipping the page each time Klaus asked her to. Technically, as Klaus was sober, Ben could be made corporeal for all of these experiences, but it was more out of respect to the other patrons of the store, who would likely start screaming at the sight of a ghost mulling over Palahniuk’s style changes over time. 

Sort of on the same page, she realized she very much liked her and Allison’s standing agreement to get drinks each week. The day often shifted, depending on Allison’s situation with Claire or her own situation with searching for new careers. Allison always looked confused when Vanya told her that she wanted to take a break from her violin, but Vanya didn’t explain that she practiced every night. It was not her violin that’s the problem for her. Moreso, it was the fear of having it as a career, of being unable to take a break without calling in (and any classical musician knew that said careers were so precarious that calling in was a rarity reserved for deaths in the family or one dying in general.) It was actually nice to research into other careers, to consider going to college again. Five had decided to go to college immediately, surprising everyone, but he simply had said, _‘What the fuck else am I supposed to do?’_ when anybody asked him about it. While Vanya researched new careers, she started working on a new book, per his constant encouragement for her to do so. 

Vanya probably could not have said what her favorite season had been _before_ she had ended the world, mainly because she’d been upset in all of them. In the time that came after, in settling down, she found she could not choose because she simply loved elements of them all. She loved the quiet and stillness of the snow in the winter, the cheeriness and calm of summer nights, the crispness of the air and the beautiful coloring of the world in fall. However, she supposed that if she had to choose just one, it would be spring. 

It was an odd thing, to love the rain. Oftentimes, it was associated with sadness. And, technically, for her, she supposed it _was._ Even now, the rain came when she couldn’t handle the ever-powerful despair that sometimes sunk deep inside of her and refused to leave. Perhaps then, it was not that she truly loved the rain itself, but she did love what came _after._

There was a word to described the smell that accompanied rain after a long time of dryness- petrichor. Vanya was not necessarily the type of person to make extended metaphors for her life, but she identified with the word. For much of her life, she lived within a state of stagnancy, a state of nothingness, a state of _numbness._ She supposed it could easily have been called depression, but it was not the melancholous event she associated with the word. Rather, it was like she had felt hollow, like there was nothing within her. 

Then, she had felt so much that she’d been overwhelmed, to a point of causing the end of the world. 

Now, she was existing in the pleasantness that came after such a tremendous amount of release. Sure, she had many days where she struggled, but it was the kind of struggle that everyone had, really. It was ordinary, and not in the way that she’d so despised growing up. No, ordinary became a pleasant word at a certain point for her. 

She had made her peace with the world, found new reasons to love it each and every day. 

Even though she had grown to love many ordinary things, the thing she loved most in the time that came after was decidedly _not_ that. 

This was especially apparent as Five paced around their apartment, opening portals absetnmindedly as he did. She wondered how it was possible for him to do that, considering he had to do complex equations each time he teleported. Though, to be fair, Five had explained once that after doing them so many times, it took roughly the same amount of effort as multiplying 9 and 8 after memorizing multiplication tables. Him not noticing that he was flitting through the house was more disconcerting for the fact that he wasn’t paying attention to anything surrounding him, something that only ever really happened when he was stressed. 

“Five,” Vanya called out, and, at the very least, he paused in the near-silent muttering to himself, perking up his ears to whatever she needed. “Are you okay?”

He frowned at her. It was odd, how much he had been through, yet the thing that always made him look the most distressed was somebody else expressing concern for him. “Yeah, I’m fine, V. Working on something.”

“Care to elaborate?”

He blinked over to her side, setting her legs against his thighs, “Would you understand if I did?”

“Probably not,” she admitted, moving to crawl onto his lap instead. He didn’t mind, just circling his arms around her to keep her steady. “But you were scaring me with your focus.”

He grimaced, “Sorry.”

“Oh, I was just…” There were many instances like this, that Vanya would tease him, and he wouldn’t quite understand. She was pretty sure it was a quirk he’d picked up from not interacting with people. Usually, he could clearly pick up on all social cues without any difficulty at all. When he was more stressed, however, he tended to start assuming that he was doing something wrong, willing to believe that whatever anyone implied was even slightly wrong was worht apology. It was one of the more noticeable effects that all he had went through had on him, something that seemed entirely out of character to him, prone to arrogance more than most people. “I was jsut teasing you,” she amended lamely. 

“Oh.”

She could hear the way he was restraining himself from apologizing again. It disturbed her much more than the pacing. “Have you been doing alright lately?”

“Can I admit something to you?” Five asked. “And, please, don’t tell anybody about it if I do.”

“I won’t,” she assured, moving closer to him. “Just tell me what it is, and I’ll see if I can help.”

“It’s weird,” Five said, staring off somewhere behind her. “Not having an assignment or an apocalypse to solve. I feel uncomfortable, being so unproductive. All day, I have been trying to find the equation that it will take to bring Ben back to an actually corporeal body, and, as much as I’d like to say it’s a selfless act, it’s because I can’t stand feeling like I am doing nothing. Does that make me a bad person?”

“No,” Vanya murmured, stroking his hair gently. “It doesn’t.”

“Do you think less of me for it?”

“Of course not.”

He sighed, relieved at just the smallest reassurance. It saddened her, how little it took it to make him happy. If all it took was the slightest reassurance to make him feel lighter, she couldn’t imagine all he had gone through to make him feel so heavy as when he first came back to them all. 

“You know,” Vanya said, trying to keep the lightness in his posture just a little longer, trying to keep the ease there at least for the rest of the night. “I can think of some other ways you could be productive.”

He tipped her chin up, grinning at her, teleporting her to their bedroom.

* * *

After they’d been together for a long enough time, she grew more and more comfortable explaining her wants and desires. Even though she knew that he wouldn’t judge her for anything, Vanya had been shy when she’d asked him about this, not sure if he would react in disgust to the concept. To be fair, there really was nothing that she could do to disgust him, had learned that at one point a long time ago, long before they had ever been together. It was the only reason she had had the confidence to ask. 

He chose a morning after a storm, and she knew that it was because she’d told him about her love of the outside world after a heavy rain. A window was open, so she could smell the nice, earth-y scent in the air, making her sigh softly and start to settle more fully to her pillows. 

That was, until she felt him between her thighs. 

She knew that the reason she had woken up was because he had shook her awake, likely not comfortable following her request precisely (he wasn’t a prude by any means, but there were a few things that made him uncomfortable, for reasons she suspected came from his time in the Commission and the woman who had run it before he left but never asked him to confirm, knowing they were his own stories to tell.)

His tongue curled, and she canted her hips up. She was still in that hazy place between awake and asleep, so her movements felt stilted. He didn’t seem to mind, pulling her forward a little before setting her thighs against his shoulders. Or at least she suspected that was what he’d done, considering the fact that he was underneath the covers. She wanted to see him, but she also didn’t want to move at all. 

Bowing her back again, she groggily croaked, “Good morrning.” She could sense him smiling as he mouthed against her clit, resting his palm at her hip. 

Vanya had not been in any long-lasting relationship before him, had ended things with most of her previous partners immediately after they’d started to even go down that path. She suspected the reason she threw herself so much into the relationship with Leonard had to with all of the circumstances surrounding that relationship. Regardless, in all of her relationships before Five, nobody had ever gone down on her. She’d thought with Five it might have been the same (though she thought that of him because he’d been somewhat of a germaphobe when he was younger), but that was not the case. In fact, when she admitted (after he’d been between her thighs for hours, coaxing out orgasms with his tongue until she’d asked him to stop because of her own oversensitivity) that nobody _had,_ he’d only gotten more insistent about doing so. 

When her orgasm washed over her, he moved to where they were face to face, and she smiled up at him. He leaned down to kiss her. “Good morning,” Five murmured against her lips, and she realized he was saying it in reply to when she’d said it before. His voice held no humor when he asked, though, “Was that okay?”

She nodded, and he relaxed. Flipping them over, Vanya straddled his hips, easing him back against the pillows as she sunk onto him. He held her hips against his palms, guiding her movements while she closed her eyes, taking in the joy that came so easily now. 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


End file.
